Career

Released EP
Husher
, 1996; released
Curb
, 1996; released
The State
, 1999 in Canada and 2000 in the United States; released
Silver Side Up
, 2001; released
The Long Road
, 2003; released
All the Right Reasons
, 2005.

Awards:
Juno Award for best new group, CARAS, 2001; Juno Award for best group,
CARAS, 2002; Juno Award for best single, CARAS, for "How You Remind
Me," 2002; Juno Award for best rock album, CARAS, for
Silver Side Up
, 2002; Juno Award for songwriter of the year, CARAS, 2003; Juno Award for
group of the year, CARAS, 2004; Juno Award for fan choice, CARAS, 2004;
Juno Award for group of the year, CARAS, 2006; Juno Award for rock album
of the year, CARAS, for
All the Right Reasons
, 2006; American Music Award for best pop/rock album for
All the Right Reasons
, 2006.

Sidelights

Nickelback became the most popular rock band to come out of Canada in the
2000s and one of the most commercially successful bands of the decade by
relying on a hit-making formula of hard rock combined with melody and
extremely catchy hooks. Sometimes described as post-grunge, a throwback to
the grunge subgenre of 1990s alternative rock, Nickelback is better
understood as a band inspired by 1980s metal and 1970s hard rock as well
as grunge, with an ear for pop songcraft. Lead singer Chad Kroeger, with
an unrelenting vocal delivery and dramatic hairstyle and goatee, has
become one of the decade's omnipresent rock stars.

Nickelback formed in the small northern Canadian town of Hanna, Alberta,
more than 200 miles northeast of Calgary in the mid-1990s. They began as a
cover band, but once an early singer and guitarist left, Chad Kroeger
began writing his own songs. His brother and bandmate, Mike, moved to
Vancouver to play in a metal band, and the rest of Nickelback—Chad,
his drumming cousin, Brandon, and guitarist Ryan Peake—traveled to
Vancouver to record their songs, then moved to the city in 1996 to pursue
a career in music. They quickly released an EP,
Husher
, followed by a full-length CD,
Curb
, and began touring Canada. Ryan Vikedal replaced Brandon Kroeger on drums
in 1999, and the band released its second full-length album,
The State
, recorded at the Green House studio in Vancouver in 1999.

A single on
The State
, "Leader of Men," caught the attention of Canadian radio
programmers. Nickelback got a boost from the fact that Canada had recently
increased the amount of Canadian content its radio stations were required
to play. Rock stations were desperate for new Canadian bands to add to
their playlists, and Nickelback's post-grunge sound fit the bill.
The band embarked on a 200-show tour to promote
The State
and opened for popular rock bands such as Creed and Silverchair. Soon
they were signed to EMI in Canada and Roadrunner Records in the United
States, which released
The State
there in early 2000. The album went on to sell 500,000 copies.

Nickelback returned to the Green House to record their next album,
Silver Side Up
, which included several songs the band had perfected on its long tour.
Spurred by the hit single "How You Remind Me," which became
the most played radio song of 2002, the album hit Number One on the
Canadian and U.S. rock charts at the same time, the first time a band had
done so since the Guess Who in 1970. The album eventually sold 8.5 million
copies. Critics seemed to peg them as imitators of grunge, but the band
seemed to differ. Chad Kroeger cited heavy-metal bands such as Metallica
and Megadeth as his first influences. As for Nickelback's music,
"Some people call it alternative rock, some call it this, that, or
the other, but to us it's just straight-up rock and roll,"
he told Tom Sinclair of
Entertainment Weekly
.

Reviewer Erik Pedersen of the
Hollywood Reporter
seemed to grasp the essence of the band. Reporting on a Nickelback show
in West Hollywood in October of 2001, Pedersen noted that the band had
mixed the hard rock sound that had taken the airwaves back around the turn
of the millennium with enough melody to appeal to a wide audience. They
seemed equally familiar with late-1990s post-grunge, 1980s metal, and Led
Zeppelin-style 1970s rock. Proud to be hard rockers, the band
"shrugged at subtlety and hissed at trendiness," Pedersen
wrote. He also noticed that Chad Kroeger, with his striking long hair and
goatee, had become a charismatic rock frontman, noting that the lead
singer easily got the crowd to scream when he wanted them to and that his
performance of a more sensitive song, "Too Bad," addressed
to Kroeger's father, "drew shrieks from the numerous females
in the crowd."

The band's next album,
The Long Road
, arrived in 2003 and sold five million copies, while the single
"Someday" hit the top ten. As fans embraced the album, some
critics recoiled. Stephen Thomas Erlewine dismissed the band as
"heavy-rock hucksters" who were aping grunge bands such as
Nirvana or Alice in Chains but not bringing any fresh creativity to their
expressions of angst. "It's all a generic litany of the
torture of relationships and the evil that dad did," Erlewine
complained. The final track, the party anthem "See You at the
Show," only led Erlewine to doubt the sincerity of the somberness
on the rest of the album. Chuck Arnold of
People
dismissed the album as "light on ingenuity" and songs such
as "Someday" as built on shallow hooks that are initially
catchy but ultimately forgettable. But Sinclair of
Entertainment Weekly
, proud not to be a rock snob, gave the album a B+, praising Chad
Kroeger's "instantly identifiable voice imbued with passion
and edge." To Sinclair, Nickelback's "single-minded
fervor" and sing-along melodies made the band good.

Chad Kroeger emeged not only as a frontman on stage and on record, but
also as a sort of musical entrepreneur, a calculating businessman, and
songwriter. Reporters noted that the members of Nickelback started
managing themselves between their first and second albums, with Chad
Kroeger tracking radio airplay of their songs. Interviewers often found
him talking at length about how he had studied what makes a popular song a
hit. "I study everything," he told Karen Bliss of
Canadian Musician
. "I started studying every piece, everything sonically, everything
lyrically, everything musically, chord structure. I would dissect every
single song that I would hear on the radio or every song that had ever
done well on a chart and I would say, 'Why did this do
well?'" Nickelback's single "How You Remind
Me," Kroeger told Bliss, sold so well because it was about romantic
relationships, a universal subject, and contained three memorable hooks,
including the "yeah-ehs" after the chorus.

Between albums, in 2005, drummer Ryan Vikedal left the band. He claimed
the rest of the band had pushed him out because he was not the type of
drummer they wanted. Daniel Adair, formerly of 3 Doors Down, replaced
Vikedal as drummer. The group's next album,
All the Right Reasons
, was released in October of 2005. It included guest appearances by Billy
Gibbons of ZZ Top—who played a guitar solo on the song
"Follow You Home" and sang backing vocals on "Rock
Star"—and a posthumously sampled appearance by Chad
Kroeger's friend Dimebag Darrell from Pantera, culled from guitar
outtakes. The band also explored a more acoustic sound on some songs.
"Savin' Me," for instance, included strings and piano
as well as guitars. "We were a little scared of using
piano," Chad Kroeger said in a biography on the band's
website. "We just didn't think it was very rock and
roll." But once they heard the result, he added, they liked it.

The critical debate over Nickelback grew even more intense with the new
album's release. Erlewine of
All Music Guide
noted that Kroeger evoked sadder emotions and the band responded with
more acoustic instrumentation, but complained that the band still repeated
the same chords, melodies, and harmonies too often; still played
"clumsy, plodding riffs"; and included little humor in their
lyrics. Meanwhile,
Entertainment Weekly
stuck up for Nickelback again. Reviewer Whitney Pastorek gave the album a
B, praising the band's "richer, more diverse sound"
and describing the single "Photograph" as
"dreamy."

Nickelback spent much of 2006 touring. Meanwhile, Chad Kroeger was
arrested in the British Columbia town of Surrey in June of 2006 and
charged with drunken driving. His attorney entered a plea of not guilty on
his behalf at a court hearing in August. In November of 2006, Nickelback
won an American Music Award for best pop/rock album, surprising the band
itself. "We just kinda showed up because we were supposed to give
one of these away tonight," Chad Kroeger said after receiving the
award, according to the
Calgary Herald
. Kroeger added that he had thought the Red Hot Chili Peppers would win
the award.

As 2006 ended,
All the Right Reasons
had sold four million copies and spawned five singles. Yet Nickelback was
not done promoting it. The band was set to headline an arena tour of North
America in February and March of 2007.

Selected discography

Husher
(EP), self-released, 1996.
Curb
, self-released, 1996.
The State
, self-released, 1999; released in the U.S. by Roadrunner, 2000.
Silver Side Up
, Roadrunner, 2001.
The Long Road
, Roadrunner, 2003.
All the Right Reasons
, Roadrunner, 2005.